Greenpeace Activists Arrested for a Prank Using This Giant Pod Outside of Apple HQ

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Beginning Monday night and carrying on into early Tuesday morning, Greenpeace activists outside of Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters staged a protest against the company’s “unclean” energy practices. The protest included a pod with Apple’s logo that projected messages onto the building.

The protest was part of Greenpeace’s “Clean Our Cloud” campaign, which seeks to raise awareness about the amount of energy data centers use. Apple has said it will be incorporating some renewable sources of energy at its North Carolina center. Wired has more on Apple’s facility and the Greenpeace protest against it:

Apple’s iCloud service — a means of storing photos, videos and other files online — is backed by a 500,000-square-foot data center in Maiden, North Carolina, and this facility is powered by Duke Energy, a utility that gets 46 percent of its power from coal and 52 percent from nuclear facilities. Though Apple says its Maiden facility will soon use 60 percent renewable energy — the company is installing a solar array and biogas plant next to the data center — Greenpeace wants more from the company.

The organization says Apple should commit to running the entire facility on renewable energy, even as it expands the footprint beyond 500,000 square feet. With its data centers in Iowa and Oklahoma, Google has signed long-term contacts for renewable energy, and Greenpeace is asking that Apple do the same. “If Apple had something like that,” Gary Cook, an IT analyst with Greenpeace, recently told us, “that would be something that would give us a lot more confidence in their intentions.”

It is reported there were also four protesters from Greenpeace outside of the pod. They were not arrested. (Photo: Greenpeace via Facebook)

Wired also notes that Apple has been a favorite target by the environmental advocacy organization of late, with it protesting Apple stores in San Francisco, New York and Toronto on April 24.

You may also recognize the pod used by the protesters in this latest stint. According to Apple Insider, the 8-by-10 “survival device” also made an appearance at Greenpeace’s protest of against Arctic drilling.

Here is a Greenpeace production advocating against the use of coal at Apple’s iCloud facility:

This story has been updated from its original posting to correct that Apple is incorporating renewable energy sources to its already completed North Carolina data center.